Toon tar­get Sam swoop
JOSE SNUB OPENS DOOR FOR PARDS

SA­MUEL ETO’O could end up fac­ing Jose Mour­inho this sea­son, rather than play­ing for him.

The Cameroon hit­man has emerged as a shock tar­get for New­cas­tle af­ter be­ing put up for sale by Anzhi Makhachkala.

He said over the week­end: “There is only one Jose Mour­inho. I have played un­der a lot of great coaches, but there is no char­ac­ter in the game like him.

“He is one of the best coaches in the world and I would like to have the chance to play un­der him again.” But the Chelsea boss is of the opin­ion that, at 32, Eto’o is past his best.

He is also still con­vinced his chase for Wayne Rooney will be suc­cess­ful.

Cri­sis club Anzhi – where Eto’o takes home a whop­ping £18mil­lion a year – have put all their play­ers up for sale with the Rus­sian top-flight side look­ing for just £5m for their prized as­set.

That has put New­cas­tle boss Alan Pardew on alert and he’ll be hop­ing the club can push through a deal.

Mi­lan and Napoli are also in­ter­ested in Eto’o, but his agent, Clau­dio Vig­orelli, says he’s got his heart set on a new chal­lenge in Eng­land.

Strict

“As a league, the Pre­mier League is the most in­ter­est­ing op­tion,” said Vig­orelli.

“Sa­muel has won in Spain and in Italy so to win in Eng­land would def­i­nitely mo­ti­vate him. There has been more than one English club show an in­ter­est but there have not been any of­fi­cial bids yet.”

If Eto’o did end up at St James’ Park, Pardew in­sists he’d have to speak English.

The no-non­sense Toon boss re­vealed he has slapped a strict ban on his for­eign le­gion talk­ing any­thing but English in a bid to speed up their set­tling-in process. Loic Remy’s ar­rival on a sea­son’s loan from QPR brings the num­ber of French play­ers at the club into dou­ble fig­ures – and they’ve still not given up hope adding to that with £7m Lyon striker Bafe­timbi Gomis.

But the cross-Chan­nel crew won’t be get­ting so much as a “bonjour” from hard­line Pardew.

“I won’t say any­thing to them in French, not even ‘oui’,” said Pards.

“My job is to in­te­grate the French play­ers and the way I do that is to make them speak English as quickly as pos­si­ble.

“It’s im­por­tant they em­brace the English cul­ture and grasp the de­mands of this league.

“One or two strug­gle, but hav­ing more French play­ers here it is eas­ier for them to adapt.”